The Life of a Cargo Pilot
by Joshua Stephens
Summary: Gast Hund was just another cargo pilot. Until the girl with green eyes asked for a ride offworld.


Gast Hund was in a spot of trouble. No, scratch that. Gast Hund was in majorly deep bantha dung.

It all started with that damned girl. If he'd just said no, he might still be sitting in that cantina, nursing his Corellian ale. But no, he had to go and agree to help her. It was those big blue eyes, that's what it was. Gast always was a sucker for blue eyes. She looked so pitiful, too. Just help smuggle her and her little furry friend off-planet, and she'd give him whatever he wanted. Anything, she said. No limits. He should have known. She was too desperate, too scared, for it to be as simple as she described. Just an ex-boyfriend, nothing more. He wouldn't look for her off-world, she said. Damn his gullibility.

Now here he was, stuck on some middle-of-nowhere Imperial outpost, staring at some kind of twelve-legged beetle climb his cell wall. The thing was the size of his hand. He shook his head in disgust. He was an honest cargo pilot, not some lowlife smuggler. He didn't belong in an Imperial jail, liable to never see the light of day again except through the narrow, energy-shielded window of his tiny cell. He paced back and forth, walking across the three meter width of his cell and back, trying to think of a way out of this.

A door slid open away to the right of his cell door, the sudden click of boot heels echoing loudly in the wide corridor. Gast heard low voices and the rustling of flimsiplast sheets on a clipboard as the footsteps grew closer, and as they rounded the corner he could see through the bars an Imperial officer of low rank, followed by two stormtroopers, finally halting at the door to his cell. Righting the sheets on his clipboard, the officer eyed Gast much as Gast had eyed the beetle.

"Gast Hund. From Dantooine, I see. Must have been boring, nothing but grass and nerf-herders for kilometers, all the time."

Gast could tell this officer had a chip on his shoulder. Probably didn't get that promotion he'd wanted last month. He continued, "You're being held on charges of assisting a fugitive, smuggling live cargo, conspiring against the Empire, and resisting arrest."

That's the bit she hadn't mentioned. The part about her being a fugitive, the small detail that, were she found with him, he would be locked up and the key thrown away. He still didn't know exactly what it was she'd done to get the Empire this riled up about it, but then there wasn't much chance of finding out now. The Force only knew where they'd put her.

"Now just hold up one second! I had no ide-" He started, before being interrupted by the Imperial.

"It doesn't really matter what you knew. You are guilty of heinous crimes against the Empire, and so will be held here until you can be transferred to a more secure facility. Aiding a fugitive of the Empire is a serious crime, and will have to be dealt with as such. Good day, prisoner."

With that, the smarmy officer turned on his heel and clicked his way back the way he'd came, followed by his white-clad flunkies. Gast could nearly see the smirk on the little twit's face as he rounded the corner. Collapsing onto his narrow bunk, Gast sat, his chin resting on his hand, staring somberly at the wall. There was that kriffing beetle again. Just as he was about to reach out and thump it with his fist, he had a sudden thought. Where had the beetle come from, and where was it going?

It had a destination, it wasn't just wondering, because it disappeared and reappeared regularly, at either end of it's path. Gast's eyes followed the beetle now, looking for where it vanished off to. There. A wide crack at the back of the cell wall. What had that Imp said? Something about transferring him to a more secure facility? That implied that it wasn't all that secure here, now didn't it...

Things were looking up for Gast Hund.

Gast stood, leaning closer, watching the beetle as it reached the crack, only to turn and continue up the wall, to the sill of the small window. There it trundled along until it's feelers contacted the energy field across the window opening, in place of bars. The brief thought passed through Gast's mind that, if that energy field were to fail, the window was just big enough for him to crawl through. You'd think there would be bars, just in case. Obviously that was part of what the Imperial officer had meant when he mentioned higher security.

Hell, where they were going to put him, there probably wouldn't be windows. Gast sighed, watching the beetle recoil with a slight sizzling noise, the tips of it's thin antennae burnt to a crisp from the barrier of pure energy. It turned around, heading back the way it had come, toward the floor. On it's way it passed another of the beetles, coming up to the windowsill. This one scuttled along, reaching the nearly transparent blue shimmering barrier quickly. It, too, got it's feelers blackened from the heat generated.

As this one trundled along back down the wall, it passed yet another on it's way up. In a way, Gast felt sorry for the poor creatures. He was just about to reach out and halt the large beetle's progress, before it too could get it's antennae burnt, when he stayed his hand, deciding to just let the damn thing go ahead. It wasn't effecting him. He was about to turn away when the bug reached the edge of the sill, where the field should be, and just kept going this time.

Unbelievingly, Gast stepped closer, peering at the opening. The blue shimmering of the energy field was gone. He quickly wrapped his sleeve around his hand, just in case, and cautiously stuck it into the space where the barrier should be. Nothing. Not believing his luck, Gast hurriedly pulled himself up to the frame of the window, looking out. Ground level! He could just wriggle through the the narrow opening, too, he thought. Grasping each side of the window frame with either hand, he carefully pushed his arms through, his head and shoulders next, followed by the rest of his torso.

Wriggling like a Gollamian figh worm, he managed to turn himself around to face up, and grab the top edge of the outside frame of the window, to finish pulling his legs through, then dropped heavily to the dry dirt beneath. Glancing left to right, sure a guard would pop out from behind a corner any second, Gast broke into a sprint, running to the tall fence a dozen meters away, not knowing how he was going to clear the three meter height, but knowing that he had to, nonetheless.

Just as he got up to the fence, and poised himself to jump up and grab ahold to start his climb, off to his left he heard a low call. Nearly panicking, he turned, facing the direction the voice had come from. There he saw the very thing he had hoped to never lay eyes on ever again in his life on this plane of existence. But just now, it was the most welcome sight he'd ever seen. The little meter-tall furry being grinned at him, pointing enthusiastically at the opening in the wire of the fence it had apparently cut out.

He'd always thought Ewoks were just cute little semi-sentients, with not much intelligence to speak of, until he met this one. He had been genetically modified, or some such thing, the girl had said. No explanation other than that. Just that he was a whole lot smarter than your typical Ewok, and could evidently co-pilot quite well. She said she was going to start a shuttle business, with the Ewok as her co-pilot.

He cursed at himself for thinking too much, instead breaking into a run to the opening, ducking quickly through, then following the little Ewok into the stand of trees, the blue-green foliage soon hiding them from view of the outpost.


End file.
